Re: [http-state] Ticket 5: Cookie ordering

[Adam Barth <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 8:51 PM, David Morris <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Jan 2010, Adam Barth wrote:
>> Ticket 3 is still open for discussion, but I'd like to get started
>> talking the next ticket:
>> http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpstate/trac/ticket/5
>>
>> == Overview ==
>>
>> Currently the draft defines the order in which cookies should appear
>> in the Cookie header.  In particular, cookies are ordered first by the
>> length of the Path attribute (longest first) and then by creation date
>> (earliest first).  The majority of the most widely used user agents
>> use this ordering. (I can look up exactly which browsers follow the
>> ordering if that's important.)
>>
>> Sending cookies with longer (i.e., more specific) paths first is
>> important for compatibly because some servers host multiple (mutually
>> trusting) web applications at different (possibly overlapping) paths.
>
> I think 'longer' is not a precise term ... likewise, 'more specific' isn't
> precise enough to avoid confusion. I think what would be expected is that
> the path sith the most 'levels' (as noted by '/' characters) is longer in a
> deeper into the hierarachy sense. Same depth, the age rule could apply.
>
> If 'more specific' is already defined similar to what I've outlined,
> you can igore this comment.

In this case, all the cookie paths are prefixes of the Request-URI
path, so these all amount to the same thing.  FWIW, longer is a
precise term: literally the one whose path attribute contains more
characters.

Adam